Agatha Christie - The Murder Of Roger AckroydCHAPTER 1 Dr Sheppard at the Breakfast TableMrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th17th September - a Thursday. I was sent for at eight o'clock onthe morning of Friday the 17th. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I opened the front door with mylatchkey, and purposely delayed a few moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat thatI had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn morning. To tell the truth, I wasconsiderably upset and worried. I am not going to pretend that at that moment I foresaw the events of thenext few weeks. I emphatically did not do so.But my instinct told me that there were stirring times ahead.From the dining-room on my left there came the rattle of tea-cups and the short, dry cough of my sisterCaroline.'Is that you, James?' she called.An unnecessary question, since who else could it be? To tell the truth, it was precisely my sister Carolinewho was the cause of my few minutes' delay. The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr Kipling tells us,is: 'Go and find out.' If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. Onemight omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly athome. I don't know how she manages it, but there it is. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmenconstitute her Intelligence Corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to spread it. Atthat, too, she is amazingly expert.It was really this last named trait of hers which was causing me these pangs of indecision. Whatever I toldCaroline now concerning the demise of Mrs Ferrars would be common knowledge all over the villagewithin the space of an hour and a half. As a professional man, I naturally aim at discretion. Therefore Ihave got into the habit of continually withholding all information possible from my sister.She usually finds out just the same, but I have the moral satisfaction of knowing that I am in no way toblame.Mrs Ferrars' husband died just over a year ago, and Caroline has constantly asserted, without the leastfoundation for the assertion, that his wife poisoned him.She scorns my invariable rejoinder that Mr Ferrars died of acute gastritis, helped on by habitualoverindulgence in alcoholic beverages. The symptoms of gastritis and arsenical poisoning are not, I agree,unlike, but Caroline bases her accusation on quite different lines.'You've only got to look at her,' I have heard her say.Mrs Ferrars, though not in her first youth, was a very attractive woman, and her clothes, though simple,always seemed to fit her very well, but all the same, lots of women buy their clothes in Paris, and havenot, on that account, necessarily poisoned their husbands.

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